certification

Continuing a series of reforms, APMG has released the ITIL exam statistics for the last three years.

Recent ITIL certification stats published by EXIN that originate from APMG show clearly that over quarter of a million ITIL certifications are issued every year (extrapolating the 9 months of stats).

200,000 of them are V2 and V3 Foundations. V3 Foundations outnumber V2 Foundations by about 6:1. So every year we certify another 200k ITILers. Think about it: three years of V3 certs, plus a decade of V2 certs. There was a rumour a while ago on twitter that we'd passed the million. I have no doubt it was true. As Mythbusters would say: "plausible"

Pierre Bernard over at Pink Elephant had a "personal rant" about "people «complaining» about the ITIL® V3 scheme" and "much negativity presently in various blogs and social media sites about the ITIL® v3 scheme". That'd be me, for one, so I feel compelled to comment.

It is confirmed from multiple sources that APMG have raised the number of students per instructor for ITIL V3 Intermediate courses from 12 to 18. [Update: well strictly speaking I shouldn't blame APMG, it is the almost invisible IQB, the murky body that represents all the snouts at the trough of training (and not to be confused with itSMFI's International Qualifications & Certifications ESC - the IQC)]. This is clearly recognition that ITIL V3 certification is not about teaching people anything, and will serve only to reduce the perceived market value of an ITIL Intermediate certification. Add to that the fact that this has not been announced to the public (as far as I can detect) and you can see that ITIL certification is all about the industry not the customer.

In an announcement last week, APMG have appointed a ninth Examination Institute. Readers will recall these are the companies that are licensed by APMG and in turn accredit all the 350+ training organisations delivering ITIL training. The EIs also administer the exams using standardised question content but their own tests and their own delivery systems.

There appears to be more vendors certifying their products against more processes on PinkVerify than the OGC scheme. Why is that? What can OGC learn from Pink about making it easier for vendors? or does it show that PinkVerify is too easy? Does it matter?

APMG have annnounced the ITIL Master certification.

Today we have a guest post from Peter Gerritsen who has written a letter to the ITIL Qualifications Board proposing some changes to the ITIL V3 qualifications scheme. I told him he has a snowflake's chance in Hell given what they went through to get the scheme to this point (I have plenty of experience of hammering on the doors of Castle ITIL). We are interested in your views:

If you know something about IT operations (not just development) and your IQ is in triple figures then passing the ITIL V3 Foundation exam should be no big deal and no big investment. (If in doubt, read the testimonials in the comments below). Follow these six nine eight steps:
[updated 25/3/2011 ]